


heed our imperfect hearts

by teaspoonery (quodpersortem)



Category: HBO War, The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon Compliant, First Kiss, First Time, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Post V-Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 04:09:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13092105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodpersortem/pseuds/teaspoonery
Summary: (livejournal re-post fromhere; mine)rating: nc-17word count: 4 260“have you ever kissed someone?” he asks in his soft distinguishable drawl, his silhouette blurred against dimmed lights, recognizable even if sledge can’t actually see himdate: 2010-06-21





	heed our imperfect hearts

  
  
Sledge hasn’t been on the island for long when the other men find out he’s still a virgin. They make fun of it, they laugh at him and ask why, but that’s about it.   
  
He doesn’t give it a second thought until the evening, when the others are asleep and Sledge is twisting and turning, trying to sleep in the heat, and Snafu is suddenly crouching next to his bed.  
  
“Have you ever kissed someone?” he asks in his soft distinguishable drawl, his silhouette blurred against dimmed lights, recognizable even if Sledge can’t actually see him.  
  
Snafu must have heard the sharp inhale of his breath –  _caught_  – because Snafu leans closer and laughs quietly. It is intimidating and it should scare Sledge because guys aren’t supposed to laugh like that, aren’t supposed to lean in beyond the other’s comfort zone but Snafu does and Sledge doesn’t feel threatened.   
  
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Snafu whispers, “ya’ can’t go off to war without any experience.” Sledge doesn’t protest, and a pair of lips meet his own. They’re cracked lips tasting of salt, perhaps because of the sea, perhaps because of the sweat, and it is strange, completely unlike he’d expected, and then Snafu swipes his tongue over Sledge’s lips. He knows it’s what happens during kissing; opens his lips a little to let Snafu in. A hand comes up to tread in his hair and Sledge hears the sounds they are making, feels tight heat in his stomach even though he hadn’t thought he would think of that right here.   
  
Burgin turns around in his bed, so Snafu stills and breaks the kiss, holding his breath. When Sledge whimpers, uncontrollably, at the loss of Snafu’s lips on his, Snafu covers his mouth with his hand.  
  
“Sledgy here had a nightmare,” he says, “I woke him up, he’s fine now.”  
  
“Alright,” Burgin replies. Snafu presses his lips briefly to Sledge’s again, then gets up and returns to his own bed.  
  
There’s no good-night, no recognition the next day, no matter how hard Sledge looks for it. All which remains are his memories and the vague hope of something in the future.   
  


***

  
  
From then on everything seems to last an eternity. Sledge knows it isn’t the truth, because he keeps track of the days in his diary – but the war and the muddy fields and corpses seem to go on forever. They run for cover daily, they sit huddled together, talking, each night until there’s a new incoming bombing.   
  
Sledge doesn’t think he’ll live to see the first day without Nips attacking them. He doesn’t believe he will return home, because nobody allows any of the men to believe in dreams anymore. Home seems like a dream these days. And Sledge also doesn’t think Snafu did wrong when he kissed him, even though the other men are still disgusted when another is sent home because of illicit deeds. Instead he keeps his lips sealed and tries his best not to think.   
  
They’ve too much time on hands though, to think that is, so eventually he has to give in – occasionally anyway.  
  
Pictures of women are a welcome distraction. Most of them are lost in the mud, but the few they do get to see he appreciates, which is good, because it means he can’t possibly care for Snafu.  
  
The war has made it easy to fool himself into believing something.  
  


* * *

  
  
The Allied Forces drop a couple of massive bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and suddenly the war’s over. It makes all of the men feel exuberant, and a little confused, because if two bombs can stop a war, then why did they have to fight and die for it?  
  
But then there’s alcohol and a chance to forget, which each man gratefully accepts. The chance to forget more so than the alcohol on its own.  
  
They call it celebrating, but it’s more a matter of drowning their sorrows.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Sledgehammer?” Snafu says, leaning against him – nearly falling off the rock they are sitting on. The ocean’s quiet rustling is audible behind them, the smell of it not to be smelt anymore. They’ve been on the island for too long – have been surrounded by the Pacific ocean for ages.  
  
“Yeah?” he says, teeth clenching down on his pipe as he speaks.   
  
“Will you come and take a walk with me?” And because Snafu is looking at him like that, round blue eyes, because his gaze is unfocused and the sound of celebration too loud, Sledge nods and gets up off the rock.   
  
They walk across the beach to the shoreline, then thread barefoot through the water washing away the footprints they leave behind. Sometimes they walk side by side, bumping into each other, other times Sledge walks in front with Snafu following him, then again they switch places so Sledge watches Snafu’s back, the way his muscles move under his shirt as he moves his arms in time with his steps.  
  
Slowly, the air seems to cool down a little, a breeze coming in from across the ocean. Sledge fancies it must be coming from the direction of America; of home.  
  
Then Snafu’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, when they are far enough from the celebrations to hear nothing but the trees and the sea, and Sledge stops. Snafu stands in front of him then and suddenly the war seems so far away.  
  
Snafu leans forward, slowly, and Sledge knows what’s coming because they’ve been here before- even if that was back in a tent and back before he went into the jungle to become a killer ( _murderer, murderer_ , his mind reverberates). He allows Snafu to kiss him, first close-mouthed and with no other part of their bodies touching, just the lips. Then Sledge opens his mouth and lets Snafu’s tongue in, lets his own hands come to rest in Snafu’s neck.   
  
They have kissed before, but this is different. Back then there may have been a spark of  _something_  -Sledge can’t quite remember although he knows Snafu didn’t sleep well that night, knows it instinctively (because he  _did_  sleep) but the kiss had most of all been because Sledge had no experience at all. Just like Snafu’d said. It wasn’t to abuse him, to get off. It wasn’t a sexual activity.  
  
Now it isn’t either, not yet, more an embrace than anything else. Sledge isn’t sure what will happen next, but for now he is glad to stand here, in Snafu’s arms, slowly kissing on the beach. It allows him to forget more and more of what has happened to him, and slowly the tension gathered during the past months starts leaving his body.  
  
“Come on,” Snafu whispers eventually, dragging Sledge down with him - onto the beach. He lays himself atop of Sledge, his body pressing into the moist sand when Snafu returns to kiss him. It takes some effort to not remind himself of all the dead torn apart bodies of friends he’s seen lay in the sand like this, piled atop of each other, so much he eventually has to break the kiss to gasp for fresh air, the memories coming back to him too vividly.  
  
Snafu waits, kissing his neck and stroking his hear, whispering it will all be fine,  _it will all be fine, Sledgehammer,_ we _will be fine_. It takes a while, but the feeling in his stomach calms down again. “Think of home,” Snafu tells him, “when you went swimming in the summer. And I know you did, you told me about it,” Sledge nods and closes his eyes and tries his damned best to recall the memories. Snafu’s hands are trailing from his hair to his neck, down his chest and under his shirt up again. He can feel the nails catching on his skin, rubbing lightly over his nipples, and finally his emotions give way for other feelings.  
  
“I think I’m better now,” he whispers, kissing Snafu back. “I believe I am.”  
  
“Good,” Snafu says, shifting a little so Sledge can feel something press against his thigh, hot and hard, and it takes him a little while to realize it’s Snafu’s erection. His throat goes dry at the thought and although he’d most rather push Snafu away and simply  _run_ , away from it all, he doesn’t. Instead he kisses the other man back, seeking that place of the blissful not-thinking.   
  
Snafu seems to understand, because he undoes the button of Sledge’s pants and pushes them down. Sledge isn’t hard yet, isn’t even halfway there, but then Snafu’s fingers are teasing skin and coarse hair, clever in the way they move so it doesn’t take long before he  _is_  hard,  _is_  gasping in time with Snafu. When he tries to push his hips up, his cock into Snafu’s hand, the other man keeps him down and instead zips down his own pants as well. “See?” Snafu places his body atop of Sledge’s, hands coming to rest in the sand next to his head, “this is what I was talking about when I mentioned forgetting this entire war.”  
  
Sledge nods, eyes lulling closed because Snafu’s got both their cocks in one hand, moving them together, slickened by precome – Sledge isn’t sure whose it is; probably the both of them, and he still hazily thinks he should be disgusted by this while he isn’t. Confused, yes, upset, quite possibly; everything but disgusted, and turn on beyond the point of caring that it is a man he is laying with, that they are Marines and not supposed to do this. Snafu slips up Sledge’s shirt so the small of his back comes in direct contact with the sand, sticking to his heated skin. Snafu’s own hands are covered in sand as well, rough with it when he takes their erections back in his hand, so he doesn’t move – just squeezes.  
  
It isn’t as if they aren’t used to sand everywhere though,  _always,_ so Sledge moves Snafu on. He doesn’t listen, stills completely instead, and weighs himself fully down on Sledge. “We can’t do this here,” he tells Sledge. “We need to go back to the camp, nobody will be sleeping in the tents now anyway.”   
  
Sledge nods, not quite knowing what he is agreeing to, although he is aware Snafu doesn’t mean this, doesn’t mean fooling around in the sand but something more serious, more adult. Something which quite possibly is better than this too – but how should  _he_  know? Snafu doesn’t blame him for it though, seems to be happy -  _eager_  to please Sledge, although he isn’t sure whether Snafu would rather do this than to get pleased by someone else, a woman maybe. Hell, he doesn’t even know whether Snafu has done this before, although Sledge thinks he must have – he seems so sure of himself.  
  
And the nerves return, when they are walking back to the camp. Distractions aren’t easily found now Snafu isn’t kissing him anymore, walking awkwardly with his erection hastily tucked back into his skivvies, cloth straining uncomfortably. When they get to the camp, walking between tents, Snafu trips over a tent line. Sledge starts laughing at him for it, the sound absurdly loud with the sound of laughter and small talk still nothing more than a slow ongoing murmur in the distance. He feels drunk, giddy somehow, and then Snafu stands in front of him. It is dark between the tents, the air both fresher than on the beach and more oppressive.  
  
They kiss again, right there in the shadows. It isn’t as desperate as before, more intimate, more needy – in the way Snafu’s erection presses up against Sledge’s thigh, in the way they embrace not purely sexual but also knowing. Trusting. That’s what it is, what this is about, comes to Sledge’s mind; trust.  
  
“Come on,” Snafu then says, breaking the kiss and grabbing Sledge’s wrist. They walk carefully so neither of them trips, watch everything carefully so they don’t run into someone. They don’t want to be seen.  
  
Eventually they stumble into the large canvas tent, no light coming in except a few beams of moonlight through the holes in the roof and walls. They deliberately choose Snafu’s bed, the furthest away from any light at all, as well as the furthest away from the tent’s entrance.   
  
“I thought about this,” Snafu says when his hands slide up Sledge’s chest, pulling off his shirt. “When you’d just arrived.”  
  
“Oh?” Sledge breathes, watching Snafu undress himself fully before he starts on Sledge’s pants.  
  
“Yeah,” Snafu pulls Sledge close to him, the both of them naked now. They step out of the clothes and onto the bed – Sledge on his back again, with Snafu settles half next - half atop of him. “I have oil, you know?”  
  
“What for?” Sledge asks him, unable to stop touching Snafu now, the expanses of caramel colored skin spread in front of him, available. He is so hard it hurts, so hard he can barely manage a coherent thought, so when Snafu pushes a finger inside of him to demonstrate what the oil is for he isn’t quite sure what to think of it. Or whether he should still be thinking at all.  
  
Snafu lets him touch wherever he wants to, while the finger gets accompanied by another, stretching him. When Snafu wriggles his fingers further in and crooks them up, Sledge’s hips shoot up and he gasps into the sweaty skin in front of him, nails clawing at Snafu’s back as he tries to  _breathe_. “Try to relax,” Snafu tells him, pulling back the fingers until they nearly pop out. When he pushes back in, he has added a third finger. “It works better that way.”  
  
He lets Sledge adjust for a bit, then hits the spot of before again and again, bringing Sledge’s erection back to full hardness where he’d lost some of it due to the awkward feeling of something up his asshole.  
  
After a while Snafu withdraws his fingers and replaces them with something blunt, something larger, pushing forwards and into Sledge and deeper and deeper and-  
  
Then there’s that spot again, and it hurts and it feels good and tears are forming, he is helpless against them, blinking so utterly futile, wet and salt staining his cheeks and the pillow underneath his head. He clutches at Snafu’s body, his fingers digging into soft skin marred with scars, nails adding new wounds that make Snafu grunt above him while he pulls back and back in. Sledge has his thighs wrapped around Snafu’s, toes curled because he has no idea how to hold himself anymore. Whines, grunts and moans escape his throat, bubbling up from a place deep inside he didn’t know existed, didn’t know it was the centre of lust boiling inside of him, rather than his neglected cock, rubbing between their stomachs – his own coarse with hairs but Snafu’s so soft, so soft it reminds him of baby skin and he shouldn’t be thinking  _that_  now for sure.   
  
This is Snafu after all, who has been toughened by war and who is towering so very high above him right now and yet he is also the man who got so close to him,  _this_  close, closer than anybody has ever been before. He made friends before war, has made more friends during it, but now, this moment right after the war, seems to be the most valuable. They will be more than just friends from now on.  
  
And the gasps keep coming, as do the tears, and Snafu then leans forward to whisper in his ear, brushing his cheek with his lips and smearing the tears even further, “congratulations, Sledgehammer, you aren’t a virgin anymore”. A hysteric laugh escapes his lips, shocking their bodies and making the field bed creak in protest, and it only creaks harder when Snafu searches for the leverage to push harder, faster towards orgasmic bliss.  
  
Sledge can barely keep himself from begging for more, body sweaty and the sound of skin slapping against skin; the sound of his own heartbeat overwhelming. The edge of pain has been replaced by something else altogether and he becomes aware of it right at the moment when Snafu stills atop of him. At first he thinks it is because the other man came, but when Sledge pulls him closer he whines and lays his arm next to Sledge’s head, treading his hand in his hair. He kisses Sledge sweetly, taking a moment to bring his other hand down between their bodies. Then he starts moving again, though slowly, the both of them breathing heavily; breathing in each other.  
  
“I love you,” Sledge chokes out, by accident and without thinking because he wasn’t even aware of it. Snafu looks at him, eyes large, presses a kiss to his lips again and tells him, “I’m the same”.   
  
Sledge doesn’t know what to make of this, what question Snafu is exactly answering to, but the bed is still creaking dangerously and he wants Snafu to move faster, so much faster, he wants to forget because the images of bodies are still on his mind. Snafu seems to have read his mind once again, because he says, “get onto the floor, on your hands and knees.” He withdraws and Sledge does what he said.  
  
His vision goes blurred when Snafu pushes in again, far more forceful than before. Snafu’s hands are at his hips, he is on his knees behind Sledge, and it is proper fucking, proper fucking that makes him sweat rivulets, dripping into his eyes and from his hair and down his limbs. It is this which makes his elbows feel weak, much weaker than thirty pushups, and he sags through them, face nearly hitting the dusty floor. He spreads his legs a little, pushes his ass back because even though he knows Snafu can’t go any faster, he wants him to,  _needs more._  
  
Snafu relaxes the grip on his hips for a moment, then brings one hand down to Sledge’s cock. The pace he uses to jerk Sledge off is fast and brutal, gripping so tight Sledge isn’t even sure he  _can_  come, and not at all what he’d usually prefer but it is what he needs right now because his muscles are tightening and he can’t stop it, can’t stop himself from clenching around Snafu and scream so hard it is no doubt audible outside of the tent, possibly even reaching the celebrating guys. He gasps and chokes on his own breath and saliva while he starts coming, eyes closed, all over the sandy floor he is kneeling on, over Snafu’s hand and obscenely dripping down his own trembling legs. Snafu keeps pushing into him, even as Sledge tries to catch his breath – which is difficult due to the overstimulus – until he goes rigid against Sledge, buried deep inside him.   
  
Sledge knows Snafu  _is_  coming this time because his hands are clenched tight over his hips and this peculiar slick feeling whenever he moves a little inside of Sledge, the accompanying sopping sounds, weren’t present before. Snafu withdraws again, this time for good, Sledge thinks, and it has the come inside of him streaming out, mixing with his own spending and sweat on his legs. He feels obscene, covered in sand and sweat and sperm, and the tears Snafu wipes away with a cloth.   
  
Then the older man rubs the cloth between his legs, cleaning him from all the filth so he feels a little more normal again, if tired, if boneless and thoughtless – which was the goal of all this. Except Sledge isn’t sure of that so much now, isn’t sure whether he should have let Snafu do this to him or whether he will always long for it with the blinding intensity he does now.   
  
Snafu helps him up, because his legs are weak and his thighs are sore, as are his arms, and gets him to his bed. He doesn’t bother with putting on any clothes, since they won’t be called out of bed tonight and it is too hot to sleep with extra cotton on their bodies. Instead Snafu slips the blanket over Sledge’s body, watching his face all the time. Sledge lets everything happen and tries to imprint the details in his mind – the calluses of Snafu’s fingers, the dirt smudged on his face and the look in his eyes –  _especially_  the look in his eyes.  
  
They kiss once more, with Snafu’s lips chapped and already dry against his, the heavy air and dull darkness weighing heavily upon the both of them. Sledge barely has the coherence of mind to tell him goodnight, and soon after he hears the rustling of sheets, of Snafu going to bed, he falls asleep.  
  


***

  
  
The next morning Snafu avoids his eyes. The other men don’t seem to notice, they are too busy getting rid of the alcohol in their bodies or still asleep. Sledge observes Snafu as he busies around in the tent, picking up the pieces of clothing they left underneath the bed; next to it. Sledge knows he has cleaned up the floor already, and he knows there won’t be a second chance – the first time was also the last time.   
  
And so he stays in bed, pretending he’s as hungover as the other men. He doesn’t react to what they say to him, only accepts the aspirin they offer in the hope to get rid of the burn between his legs, the pounding headache from too much confused thoughts. It doesn’t help, and Sledge isn’t surprised about it. The churning feeling in his stomach makes him lose his appetite, the glimpses of Snafu he sees during the day make his heart pound and bring a burn to his eyes, a choked up feeling to his throat. When he doesn’t think of Snafu, he thinks of his dead friends, once on the beach and now buried beneath the sand. Wonders whether he will ever get over this, over any of it, and then wonders why he enlisted at all. When he remembers Sid, and it takes a while, he wishes he didn’t do  _that_  either – remembering his best friend. He understands what Sid said about home being faraway.  
  


***

  
  
Though sudden and unexpected, yet not so much he can’t say goodbyes like the day Sid left, they get to go home. The realization dawning upon the men, ‘we survived, we lived through the war and we  _do_  get to see our families again, our wives and children, our girlfriends and best friends’ makes them exuberant. It has the train they’re on shake with a sudden new energy, the lust for life Sledge doesn’t feel because he is sitting opposite of Snafu and Snafu flirts with a woman, and Snafu is about to get off the train to leave him. They haven’t even exchanged addresses.  
  
It means Snafu will become as much a memory to him as any of the other men will be, dead or alive. It means that Sledge will have to find a way to go on with his life without any of them.  
  


***

  
  
When he wakes up, the train still rocking over the trail, Snafu is gone. He swallows thickly and tries to get back to sleep but it doesn’t work – he keeps staring at the empty place across him.  
  
When Sid, of all people, comes to pick him up from the train station, Sledge doesn’t mention anything. They talk about the birds and the bees, about marriage, but not about the war and the friends they’ve lost.  
  


***

  
  
As if by miracle, and perhaps it is, Eugene Sledge finds a woman he thinks is fit to marry, who says ‘yes’ when he kneels in front of her and bluntly asks it. As if by miracle, he ends up telling her a thing or two about Snafu, though he also tells her about Ack Ack being carried past them, dead, and De L’Eau spelling everything out when they first met him. He tells her about Leckie, with his opinions on religion Sledge didn’t understand at first but gets all too well these days, and Burgin telling him and Snafu they are good marines. He most of all tells her, or tries to tell her, about the horrors, in the hope to make her understand though he soon discovers nobody ever does, nobody who hasn’t been there - to the islands.  
  
And nobody but Snafu knows what he  _really_  felt when he was right there, not even himself as the memories are starting to fade to the background by day, and when he dreams he always dreams Snafu right there with him, as if they were a unit, a sealed bond of thoughts and feelings and experiences. He can’t recall the feeling because he isn’t with Snafu anymore, and the days since he’s last seen him become a larger and larger amount, until they are months, years, decades.  
  
That is the point where he forces his thoughts to stop, to play with his kids or return to his work, because thinking doesn’t do much good. Shutting down his memories has proven the most effective way to get on with his life, not to wallow in self-pity the best way to feel  _good_.   
  
But nothing ever takes away the gaping holes, the jungle rot and the bullets, the sickness and death and  _love_  that got to his heart during the war. He’ll forever carry it with him, until the moment he will die.  
  
  


>   
>  _love is more thicker than forget_  
>  _more thinner than recall_  
>  _more seldom than a wave is wet_  
>  _more frequent than to fail_
> 
> _it is most mad and moonly_  
>  _and less it shall unbe_  
>  _than all the sea which only_  
>  _is deeper than the sea_
> 
> _love is less always than to win_  
>  _less never than alive_  
>  _less bigger than the least begin_  
>  _less littler than forgive_
> 
> _it is most sane and sunly_  
>  _and more it cannot die_  
>  _than all the sky which only_  
>  _is higher than the sky_
> 
> _e. e. cummings_


End file.
